Kofi A. Annan, a former secretary-general of the United Nations and Nobel Peace laureate, was Chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation, which mobilizes political will to overcome threats to peace, development, and human rights. He also chaired the Elders and the Africa Progress Panel.

When things get complicated it's time to go back to basics!
Sanctions must be used to protect mainly human rights and environment and not to protect some big corporations or some big states interests! Peaceful means are more effective than military action.
Corporations and countries must be aware of what humanity, through UN, consider as value deserving full protection, and no derogation must be accepted.
Corporations must not thrive over countries or people and countries must not violate human rights. It's as simple as that!
UN decisions must be implemented directly and commit all countries and all corporations in world.
Any country or corporation not following UN decisions must be directly isolated, until it complies with the decision.

Kofi Annan and Kishore Mahbubani question the wisdom of imposing sanctions, saying sanctions alone are often "counterproductive." They "have had limited success" and often only in "combination with other factors." The authors claim the UN Security Council "has more sanctions regimes in place than at any time in its history," from 8 in the 1990s to 16 today, excluding those imposed by the EU and the US. Despite the rising number of sanctions in recent decades, they have not "proved a remarkably effective tool in promoting international peace and security."
One can't help wondering the timing of this commentary. Why now? Perhaps to warn the US, as pressure is building on the Administration to impose new sanctions on Iran after it test-fired two medium-range ballistic missiles in the past three months. Although new sanctions could unravel the nuclear deal, yet acquiescing in the face of provocations could only embolden Iran. Since its nuclear ambition emerged in 2002, the UN, the EU and several countries had imposed sanctions, targeting Iran's oil industry. They hoped to prevent the country from developping military nuclear capability. Sanctions did bite and hurt Iran's economy badly, forcing the leadership to the negotiating table, which led to the nuclear deal last year. If imposed, U.S. sanctions on ballistic missiles would remain in place after the nuclear agreement is implemented, as will those related to terrorism and human rights violations. The US and EU sanctions on Myanmar had also worked, prompting the country to "open up its economy and engage in gradual political reform."
The authors are right about "ineffectiveness" when targeted regimes take advantage of sanctions to enrich themselves, "by controlling black markets in prohibited goods", while destroying the country's real economy and the livelihoods of regular employees . It is the case in Iran, where the Revolutionary Guards have a finger in the economic pie, and they are the ones who have sought to scuttle the deal. In Haiti the military regime had also been involved in illegal trade with black-market oil. Sanctions could be a double-edged sword, that cuts both ways. In the case of punishing Russia for the annexation of Crimea, the Kremlin had turned the tables on Brussels, but banning fresh produces from EU countries. Soon "affected" farmers and traders resented "their leaders for imposing the sanctions". In the 1990s US-backed sanctions against Iraq had "serious consequences not just for Saddam Hussein and his regime," but also "for huge numbers of innocent people." Between 670,000-880,000 child deaths are said to have been recorded.
Sanctions do "serve some purpose" and “can be justified if the alternatives of inaction or armed force are worse." A perpetrator may be emboldened following an "inaction" from the international community. "Armed force" should be proportionate and only considered as the last resort. The authors say politicians tend to "depend excessively on sanctions," as a "shortcut" to resolving a crisis, while forgetting diplomacy." For sanctions to "achieve success and avoid unintended consequences, carefully calibrated sanctions must be pursued in tandem with political engagement."

What was this article all about??? The UN has been a tool of the USA and EU to ensure their hegemony. Whenever they want to get rid of a regime or impose a regime change then they have used tools such as economic sanctions backed by social ostracsation of a countries legitimate government and then fallen back on military stikes using humanitarian considerations. The UN has been a compliant tool in all of this. Can one explain why sanctions have never been imposed on regimes that are allies of the US or EU?

There is no question that sanctions if applied intelligently against rogue governments are an effective tool to alter their bad behavior; that some tinkering is needed with the protocols that currently exist in place is also a must to make them more effective. However, the United Nations Security Council as well as the other countries that apply them should focus on punishing the leadership of miscreant regimes either by arresting or neutralizing their earthly existence for in many cases the common citizens in the streets bear the brunt of the embargoes while the tyrants and their clique of yes men do not truly suffer the consequences. Cuba, Iraq, Iran, North Korea as well as other states are prime examples of these laudable but yet failed policies.

If the liberal order wants to penalize the true offenders aim at the heads of state rather than the citizenry. This will send a message to all the Castro's and Hussein's within the global community that no autocrat whether from the left or the right is safe from prosecution when they oppress their constituencies.

Unfortunately, sanctions remain a signal of concern - either national or international - which add very little to the practice of intelligent diplomacy for conflict resolution. Further, it leads to the search for alternative mechanisms of engagement which fosters both subversion of the sanctions regime and the creation of mechanisms that facilitate the violation of international law and sovereignty of various parties.

The Iran-Israel-Contra-scandal can arguably be classified as one of the worst examples of a lack of intelligent diplomacy among many parties and reflected the cynicism that has fostered the prolonged crisis within the Middle East and the Persian Gulf in which hundreds of thousands of innocent victims have lost their lives . It is unfortunate that Mr. Carisch sees the NATO intervention in Libya as a sign of the intelligent use of sanctions prior to military intervention and the disaster that followed - including the collapse of the Libyan state.

In the case of South Africa, the sanctions regime became an exercise in futility that ultimately led to the effort to create a nuclear deterrent force by the apartheid state and it was the decisive military interventions of the Soviet Union and Cuba in support of the former Portuguese colonies that accelerated the search for a new constitutional order in South Africa.

Messrs. Anan and Mahbubani have asserted the important issue:
"getting sanctions right has generally been a less compelling goal than getting sanctions adopted." It is time for a serious discussion that addresses the failures of sanctions as an instrument of conflict resolution and diplomacy in wider context.

We read with interest ‘A rethink on sanctions necessary’ in which Kofi Annan and Kishore Mahbubani warn against excessive dependence on sanctions as a coercive and potentially counterproductive tool. While the authors admit that sanctions do serve some purpose, they ground their critique in a rewind of 20-year old tapes of failed UN sanctions on Iraq and Haiti, two of its first of 23 sanctions cases of the last quarter-century.

Annan (former UN Secretary-General) and Mahbubani (former Permanent Representative of Singapore to the United Nations and Security Council President and sanctions committee chair during Singapore’s Council tenure from 2001 to 2002) both know efforts to make sanctions more effective, fair and transparent, are an ongoing and unending endeavor, and the results are clearly visible to those willing to see.

But instead, they tread the well-worn path of many sanctions skeptics by selectively citing academics who seem unaware of the UN Security Council’s adaptations and sharpening of the sanctions instrument. They prefer instead to regurgitate outdated grievances, which George Lopez has called ‘early ‘90s hangover’.

Few – including ourselves – would disagree that double standards in application and neglect of implementation by the UN Security Council’s Permanent Five members have had counterproductive effects. Debate about sanctions effectiveness always has merit. But the authors overlook the vast improvements in the design, application and implementation of UN sanctions that have occurred over the past 20 years, significantly, that the Council has not employed comprehensive sanctions (blanket trade bans) such as those on Iraq and Haiti since 1994, moving instead to more precisely targeted, or ‘smart’ sanctions.

Without targeted sanctions, there would have been no successful lockdown of Al-Qaeda assets after 9-11; no reliance on even more refined targeted financial measures adopted against ISIS just last week; or, no ability to turn Iran’s pursuit of weapons development into a historic global disarmament agreement. Nor would transitions from war to stable governance in Liberia or Sierra Leone have occurred without UN sanctions.

The recent report of a two-year comprehensive High Level Review of UN Sanctions (HLR), sponsored by Australia, Finland, Germany, Greece, and Sweden and organized by CCSI and Sue Eckert of the Watson Institute, Brown University, contains 150 recommendations for further improving sanctions effectiveness, many of which are already being implemented.

Grounding their criticism in a recently published study conducted by Thomas Biersteker of the Graduate Institute (Geneva, Switzerland) jointly with Eckert, does not solidify the authors’ argument. Bierstecker's widely quoted estimate that “sanctions are effective only about 20 per cent of the time", cited without qualifying information and context leads to misinterpretation. Bierstecker himself has written that “targeted sanctions are much more effective in constraining or signalling a target than they are in coercing a change in target behaviour.” He has praised the impact of commodity sanctions and his research also indicates that sanctions have and can continue to play an important role in mediating violent conflicts. So why do Annan and Mahbubani fail to analyze sanctions with the nuance and complexity they warrant?
The failure of the 2011 Libya intervention to lead to a stable nation is a useful case in point. As Gadhafi was mobilizing to kill thousands of regime opponents in Benghazi, concerted diplomatic activities were supported by UN, EU and autonomous sanctions that cut off access by Gadhafi to nearly half of his usable monies - about $ 36 billion. Thus, financial sanctions immediately denied the dictator the ability to import additional heavy weapons, to hire mercenaries, or to contract with elite commando units.
But armed intervention as part of a no-fly zone was implemented as well, as was a request to the International Criminal Court to initiate actions against key members of the Gadhafi family. All of these initiatives were accompanied by massive covert actions by many Western and Arab States. The result was an unmitigated disaster that included untold humanitarian suffering, unrestrained leaking of military stockpiles, uncontrolled fracturing of ethnic and political groups, and the lynching of Gadhafi. The Libya debacle was not due to failed sanctions but to narrow policy and military decisions that failed to plan for what happens in Libya ‘the day after Gadhafi falls’.

Attributing failed conflict resolution to big power politicking that too frequently inhibits and undermines Security Council decisions is certainly justified. The Security Council’s Permanent Five rarely live up to UN Charter ideals and promises. Annan and Mahbubani's complaint about the P5's "reverse veto", however, is too facile. The ten members of the Security Council, of whom five are elected each year to two-year terms, also enjoy a sort of veto. Given that sanctions committees make decisions by unanimous consent, each member has an important but underutilized opportunity on each decision to ensure optimal fairness and clarity in sanctions policies.

Annan and Mahbubani are surely aware that the weight of their opinions could encumber the international community's only humanitarian means of protecting civilians while preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, or human rights atrocities. Perpetuating misperceptions may unduly constrain its ability to resolve conflict by peaceful means, i.e., without resort to economic warfare, or military force, including targeted drone strikes.

Enrico Carisch and Loraine Rickard-Martin are principals of Compliance and Capacity Skills International, LLC (CCSI), a partnership that supports the fair and effective application of sanctions; David Cortright is Director of Policy Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame and Chairman of the Board of the Fourth Freedom Forum; and George A. Lopez served on the UN Panel of Experts monitoring sanctions on North Korea [2010-11] and is co-author with Cortright of several books and articles on UN sanctions. Lopez is co-editor of The Sanctions Enterprise: Assessing a Quarter-Century of UN Action for Peace, Security and Human Rights [Cambridge University Press, 2016].

It's almost an article of faith among "activists" that sanctions can be credited with ending Apartheid in South Africa. I was there during most of that period, and don't remember sanctions having much of an impact. I didn't get to see British TV shows, for example. When the end came, it seemed perfectly natural, as if it was part of the nation "growing up" and discarding a childish tendency that was holding it back.

I know it's possible that it was "spun" that way, but local politicians seemed to me to be incapable of such artifice. For example, I remember the Minister of Foreign Affairs, "Pik" Botha, speaking strongly in favour of Mandela's release - not something you'd have previously associated with a die-hard Afrikaner.

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A look back at one of the darker episodes of the 1930s New Deal suggests that we should all be worried about US President Donald Trump’s narrow-minded approach to domestic policymaking. With his relentless pursuit of short-term political gain, Trump may be laying the groundwork for disruptions on a global scale.

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